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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1974 Cheek discusses winning forestry conversionsPAGE TWO TEXAS FORESTRY But what did people know about us, in the forest industry, in general? People believed we were running out of timber and forest. People believed that industry owned most of the forest. People believed that nearly all of the forest was in the west. Cheek Discusses Winnin g Forestry Conversions limited audience. So we know that our story is credible and acceptable, and we know that we can get it across, if we speak calmly and in simple words that everybody understands. Now, how has all of this been done? The following speech was made by George C. Cheek at the 60th Anniversary Program of the Texas Forestry Association at the Red Carpet Inn in Beaumont, Texas. A year or so ago, in some saloon, several of us were talking about cities. I have a memory of one early morning in Dallas —about six o'clock. For some reason, I was out walking, waiting for the coffee shop to open. It was a nice morning, and there were a few people out, mostly on their way to work, I suspect. Somebody smiled and said, "Good morning." I'd spent too much time in the east. Nobody does that. I was so startled I didn't reply. But I was ready for the next one. And the ones after that. That was my impression of Dallas. People being friendly. And I said so. Somebody's wife only heard part of the conversation —that I like the way people treated one another in Dallas. She got pretty upset and said those people killed John Kennedy. It turned out that she lives in New York City and she'd never been to Dallas. Or any place in Texas, for that matter. And doesn't intend to. Her husband asked us to please not talk about New York and we went on to other things. Another time, in New York, I was talking to someone and a guy at the next stool corrected my pronunciation of the name of a town in Washington state. It turned out that he'd never been there, either, and I'd lived within five miles of the place for nearly ten years. I didn't win . that argument, either. I'm suppose to be talking about winning conversions, admittedly to forestry, and not to Texas, but those examples, at least, don't make me out to be too successful at winning conversions to anything. But taken together, those two incidents don't say much for people who live in New York. But it is the loud, obnoxious ones that you remember —not all of the nice people, who are like nice people everywhere else. THE WAY IT WAS Now that's about the way we felt in the forest industry, three or four years ago. Somebody obnoxious would start making flat statements about clearcut- ting or some of those hot words like raping the forest would pop out or somebody would say something about a ton of old newspapers saving 17 trees, and we assumed that that was how the whole world felt and talked. More than that we were pretty well convinced that a lot of people on newspapers or in public office didn't know what they were talking about. Then we found out that they didn't know what we were talking about because we weren't making much effort to explain ourselves and, like the lady from New York, they hadn't been there. People in general tend to be skeptical about other people. All that lady from New York knew about Dallas was that that was where Kennedy had been killed and, on the basis of that information, maybe she had a right to her opinion. If she and my other obnoxious friend were the only contacts any of us ever had had with New York, we would be pretty well entitled to an obvious opinion there. THE TRUTH When we tried to explain the truth, we found that almost nobody knew the difference between a national park and a national forest. Nobody really knew what wilderness meant. Words and phrases like "allowable cut," "sustained yield," "climax forest" and even ' `clearcutting" were in- comprehensible to the public. Multiple use, so far as the public was concerned, meant you could make lumber, ply- wood and paper out of the same log. Tolerance , and intolerance had something to do with arguments in Mississippi and Birmingham. I'm compressing a lot of events into a few words here, but it boiled down to this: we knew for a fact we weren't getting anywhere with Con- gress or with the public, but it took a series of opinion surveys for us to find out why. Maybe we shquld have known why, but we didn't. Communications Program ' At that point, the whole industry got together in a communications program. that has been stronkly supported in Texas, • and that seems to be making it easier to talk sensibly to all of the groups we have to deal with. The objective of• all this is, of course, the conversion of these people to.the goskel of good forestry. Now we have not straight- ened out all of our misunder- standings by a long shot, but we've made a lot of progress. Originally, some groups that we called filters were a big problem: newsmen, teachers, public officials and others in public life all filter information that goes to the public, to students and to readers of publications or listeners or viewers to the broadcast media. In the last couple of years several hundred newsmen have been taken on forest tours. They've seen what we are talking about and we're beginning, all over the country, to get a better press. About a all the schools in the count 'are usin our material o ay, and the industry is working with the environmental educati dirpc- wes ern s s. We're rtry >; to deve op a set of c rriculum guides for grades from kindergarten throug gh school that can be used in those states and, eventually, else- where. The legislative climate is changing, even though it is a long way from being perfect. We mandged to • avoid the Metcalfe and Hatfield -Bills and the Humphrey- Rarick Bill has become law. More Interest The public is much more interested and much more willing to ,listen —the energy crisis has helped, and so has the series of shortages the country is plagued with. The fact that any resource at all is renewable is good news. Along with that, the fact that any resource at all is not disappearing off the face of the earth probably is even better news. The series of advertisements that we have been running in Time magazine has improved attitudes toward forest manage- ment by eleven percentage Points, at least among that Advertising has to be the base. You can pick your message, you can select your words, you can decide on your own time and your own place. We started with specialized messages for special audiences in special magazines. We were very leery about the effect of some of these messages, and we wanted to test them out before we spread them very far. At the same time, we didn't think there was much point on going to the general public, so long as the people the public listened to thought we were all a bunch of liars. This year, however, we did move into Time magazine. We've developed a series of advertisements that began talking more specifically about issues, about actions and offering people a place to write for more information. The response, in terms of reader- ship opinion and in terms of letters, has been satisfactory, to say the very least. After advertising, publicity always is the second link. We send out a regular series of releases to newspapers, we deal with the other print media and the broadcast media, but we also work as hard as vve can to make sure that newsmen have a place to call when they need information. We don't want them just going to the Sierra ClUb or a government agency for facts. Literature In this next area, I hope that some of our literature, at least, is familiar to you. This piece, for example, started out with a very narrow audience. We intended it just for peo le in the news r usmess. ut is as evo ved into a basic consumer piece, and we have distributed more than a million copies since it was first published. GreenAmerica is a quarterly on forest management that's getting phenomenal reactions. It's something I'm sure most of you have seen through the regional program being conduc- ted through the Texas Forestry Association. It unfolds into a poster, but there always is a solid message involved before people get to the poster, which we hope will keep them reminded of that message. Most Powerful Medium The most powerful mass medium today probably is broadcast. Television and radio. We have a series of radio spot announcements that are being used in Texas, complete with jingle, along with many other parts of the country. This material is quite easy to localize. The most spectacular stuff, however, is on television. There is a fairly large series of television spots, all of them either thirty or sixty seconds long, which are designed to be used in the space that stations must devote to public service announcements. We've had very good success with them, and I'd like to show you just three. The first of the three is a new one just aimed at reassuring [See CHEEK, Page Three] O-TE T. Hy -Test Sales Representative MINCE LODUCA P.O. lox 36449 Hoeston, Texas 11036 NOVEMBER, 1974 THE 8=G no MOINES SERVING FOREST INDUSTRIES OF THE SOUTH FORK LIFTS, PULPWOOD LOADERS, FRONT END LOADERS, SKIDDERS AND REFORESTATION EQUIPMENT TAYLOR MACHINE WORKS. INC. / LOUISVILLE, MISSISSIPPI PARTS A SERVICE WAREHOUSES — MONTGOMERY,ALABAMA 4213 Mobile Highway Ph. (205) 281 -0540 CAMDEN, ARKANSAS Box 2005, Cullendale Station Ph. (501) 231 -5809 LVALDOSTA, GEORGIA P. O. Box 804 Ph. (912) 242 -4035 i RAYSON, LOUISIANA P. O. Box 71 Ph. (381) 649 -2806 LOUISVILLE, MISSISSIPPI (Master Depot) . O. Box 150 Ph. (601) 773 -3421 FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA 1048 Southern Ave., Lakedale Sta. Ph. (919) 485 -2177 COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA 1717 Peeples St., Denny Terrace Ph. (803) 754 -7723 JASPER, TEXAS 603 South Wheeler Street Ph. (713) 384 -5750 or 384 -5759 DIRECT SALES REPRESENTATIVES — Dwight Addkison — East Alabama W. C. IDub) Bruner (Skidders) — Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas Frank Canty — South Mississippi Stewart Canty — East Texas, West Arkansas Robin Dalton — South Carolina J. J. Eaves — South Georgia, Northeast Florida Vance Eaves — North Georgia W. B. Ellington — North Carolina George Parkman — Louisiana Damon Pugh — Tennessee W. H. (Bud) Rhodes (Skidders) — Alabama, Mississippi Don Woodruff — North Mississippi Paul Younger — West Alabama, Northeast Flnri.i, SAFETY BOOTS TO DO THE JOB GEORGE CHEEK